Month: September 2010

That is the essential question many online casino marketers consider. The trust factor conveyed by an online casino can make or break a customer’s experience, and is the ultimate reason why they continue to play at a particular online casino or leave for another one. Trust can be established in a variety ways. We’ll delve into a few of them below. In the end, if a player can’t trust a casino, they’ll probably never return. It’s both a pragmatic and emotional decision.

Word of Mouth – Old fashioned word of mouth commentary about casinos is probably one of the top ways trust is established. If your friends are telling you that a certain casino is a safe place to play, chances are, you’ll head that direction. If you trust your friends, you’ll trust their recommendations. This is why many online gaming sites offer new player referral programs, because recruiting friends produces a high signup to depositor conversion ratio.

Online Casino Forums/Chat Boards – Forums can be both a blessing or a thorn in the side of an online casino. When players get together to talk about their experiences at certain casino websites, they’ll inevitably establish that some online casinos are more reputable than others. Players will share their deposit/withdrawal stories and experiences with customer experience. Once the majority of the chat board/forum has concluded that a casino is off limits, you can be sure that almost everyone who reads the posted threads will come to the same conclusion. This can work both ways: good casinos get good reviews and more traffic, while bad ones get poor reviews.

Search Engine Results – It’s no secret that people tend to inherently trust search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. When they search for a place to play, the casino sites that appear in the search results suggest that the respective search engine approves of them, whether or not this is actually true in reality. In other words, if “ABC Casino” is the first result in Google for a search for “online casino”, most people will click that result because they believe Google to be a trustworthy website; ergo, the search results can be trusted. Most spammy and under financed casinos can’t afford a quality search engine marketing campaign, so right away these types of sites are excluded from search results before they ever get started.

Casino Website Appearance/Functionality – Although this factor can be subjective, most players, in general, believe casino websites that are well designed and free of errors/bugs are more trustworthy than sites that don’t load properly, have poor uptime, or have weak graphics. It’s no secret that appearances matter in the casino business. This is true both online and offline. So, if you’re designing a casino website, remember that trustworthiness can be made or broken by the look you create. Also, if there are an inordinate amount of programming errors that disrupt’s a user’s experience, players will tend to conclude that the casino is both untrustworthy and offering casino games that are rigged or ridden with bugs. Players will almost immediately leave such websites.

Customer Service – Would you trust ( or even patronize ) a supermarket where management and employees don’t bother to help you? Further, would you trust a store where your financial transactions are bungled? These are the same questions that go through the minds of casino players. Online casinos that don’t answer their customer’s questions in a reasonable amount of time develop poor customer service reputations. Similarly, if players find that a casino does not payout winnings promptly – or does not pay winnings at all, they’ll quickly close their account and go elsewhere. Customer service counts!

We hope you’ve picked up a few valuable tips in our article about trusting online casinos. When in doubt, always go with your gut. If it looks bad, it probably is bad. Don’t fool around when it comes to spending money online: there are plenty of reputable gaming sites that want your business, so don’t waste your time or money with sites that could care less.

Looking for a fast paced, high energy multi-hand blackjack game? Well your search is over: check out TopGame’s Multi-hand Blackjack, a game that offers moderate betting limits and lots of action.

We tried the game just recently. You’ll see a screenshot of the game above. As you can see, we chose to play 3 handed, getting blackjack on the second hand and a terrific double-down opportunity on the first hand, an 11 against a dealer 2. Our third hand was business as usual, standing on a hard 17. As it turns out, the dealer busted with a 22, and we cleaned house making $100 on our first hand (doubled-down), $75 on our second(blackjack), and $50 on our third.

Overall, the gameplay was solid and consistent. There were no service interruptions or lengthy graphics downloads. Instead, as soon as we left the casino lobby, we were able to jump right into action. The game doesn’t have a shuffle pause either, which is good news for fans of action blackjack. This game isn’t for the faint of heart: hands are dealt fast and furious, and if you don’t watch out, you can either end up bankrupt or rich in a matter of minutes.

In terms of game tips, it’s best to stick with standard Blackjack basic strategy for multi-deck games. If you like to count cards, we noticed that the shoe appears to deal more face cards after a run of low cards are dealt. All of this really comes down to TopGame’s RNG and game physics. We haven’t done any long term card counting experiments with this game.

A word of advice: just because it’s “Multi-hand Blackjack”, you don’t have to play 2 or more hands every time. If you’re falling into a bad rut, reduce your bets and stick with one hand for a while. Then, when things start to shift in your favor, switch to multi-hand action to take advantage of additional money making opportunities. Play smart and don’t go too crazy with unorthodox double-downs or pair splits that you wouldn’t normally do in a land based casino. This game runs on multiple decks of cards and that only benefits the house.